{"id":2883,"date":"2011-09-13T15:50:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-13T07:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=2883"},"modified":"2011-09-13T15:50:15","modified_gmt":"2011-09-13T07:50:15","slug":"hewitt-and-tomic-to-spearhead-davis-cup-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2011\/09\/13\/hewitt-and-tomic-to-spearhead-davis-cup-charge","title":{"rendered":"Hewitt and Tomic to spearhead Davis Cup charge"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Lleyton Hewitt and Bernard Tomic will spearhead Australia\u2019s challenge against a powerful Swiss team in their Davis Cup by BNP Paribas World Group Play-off tie on the grass courts of the Royal Sydney Golf Club next week.<\/p>\n<p>The Australians also named big serving Melbourne left-hander Chris Guccione and talented Victorian Marinko Matosevic\u00a0 in their four-man team to do battle against a Swiss team comprising Roger Federer, Stanislas Wawrinka, Stephane Bohli and Marco Chiudinelli under the captaincy of Severin Luthi.<\/p>\n<p>Australian Davis Cup captain Pat Rafter is confident Hewitt will be fit and said they (he and coach Tony Roche) had chosen the team based on form, fitness and the surface.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLleyton missed the US Open and has arrived in Sydney nice and early to get the best possible preparation. He is a fighter and I am confident he will get his body right for the tie,\u201d Rafter said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously there is a watching brief on Marinko and his ankle. If he doesn\u2019t come up we will make a late change. But we want to give him every opportunity to prove his fitness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Matosevic was first to withdraw from his first-round match at the US Open when he injured his ankle in the first set. The Australians have added West Australian Matt Ebden to the squad on standby and he will be in Sydney training with the team.<\/p>\n<p>Popular veteran Peter Luczak is also in the squad as a hitting partner as is the designated \u201corange boy\u201d (junior hitting partner) former world number one junior Jason Kubler.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to get them on the grass, in front of our home crowd and fight like hell to win this tie. All of our guys have been picked because they play well on grass. We are the underdogs but we don\u2019t mind that at all. This is a very determined bunch of guys,\u201d Rafter said.<\/p>\n<p>The winner of the tie on 16-18 September will be in the Davis Cup\u2019s prestigious World Group in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Australia beat China 3-1 to get to this round while Switzerland defeated Portugal 5-0.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>To keep up with the latest Davis Cup details, please <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tournaments\/davis-cup\/next-tie\/australia-v-switzerland-australia-2011\"><strong>CLICK HERE<\/strong><\/a><!-- \/Right Col --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lleyton Hewitt and Bernard Tomic will spearhead Australia\u2019s challenge against a powerful Swiss team in their Davis Cup by BNP Paribas World Group Play-off tie on the grass courts of the Royal Sydney Golf Club next week. The Australians also named big serving Melbourne left-hander Chris Guccione and talented Victorian Marinko Matosevic\u00a0 in their four-man [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5894,"featured_media":2884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}